ANTUCA Film, April 17th St Andrews 5:00 p.m.

After being screened in Berlin, Paris, London, Madrid, Lisbon, Barcelona and several other cities, the recently restored film Antuca (María Barea, Peru, 1992, 72 minutes) comes to Scotland thanks to a collaboration between the St Andrews Institute for Gender Studies, CinemaAttic, and the exhibition ‘Say No! Art, activism and feminist refusal’ at the Wardlaw museum.

This precious docufiction received very little critical attention from the gatekeepers of taste when it was released. However, nowadays, it is finding its audiences in Peru and abroad. The film follows its homonymous protagonist, Antuca, an Indigenous domestic worker, from her robbed childhood to becoming a union organiser. The process of its production is remarkable, especially if you compare it with films such as Roma (Alfonso Cuaron, 2018) – a story also focused on an Indigenous maid which features a virtually voiceless character used by the filmmaker to rejoice in his own nostalgia. In contrast, Antuca, the result of the longstanding collaboration between a domestic workers union (IPROFOTH) and the Peruvian feminist film collective Warmi, showcases a successful strategic inter-class alliance for the creation of emancipatory films, still effective today.

María Barea, founder of the Warmi collective and director of Antuca, will be joining us for a Q&A. We’ll have time to discuss the production process in the 90s and the restoration and recirculation of the film led by Barea and an international group of scholars and archivists in the present. Here are the dates:

EDINBURGH. April 14, 7:00 pm. The Edinburgh Cine and Video Society. 23a Fettes Row. Tickets here.

ST ANDREWS. April 17, 5:00 pm. School III. St Salvator’s Quadrangle. Tickets here.

Join us. All welcome!